


Bitter Wine

by JeanGraham



Category: Blake's 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 12:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20447336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeanGraham/pseuds/JeanGraham
Summary: Cally reflects on Avon's capture in "Rumours of Death."





	Bitter Wine

**See all of my fanfic and links to my pro fiction at <http://jeangraham.20m.com.>**

**Bitter Wine** by Jean Graham   


_Why do you imagine I've never gone back? Affection for him?_

I am not often so cruel with words. But yours was an anger   
that fed upon my own, festering until I could do nothing else but   
retaliate. And so I exchanged hurt for thoughtless hurt.   
Forgive me, Avon. For my words and for the deception that   
followed.

I never meant the bonding to last so long. I was wrong, I   
know, to form it at all. But I simply could not allow you to   
face the interrogators alone when there was a way...

The link was formed in the moment before you teleported to   
Earth, to allow yourself to be captured. I needed nothing more   
than to touch your hand. You never noticed.

I only wanted to help. How could I possibly have foreseen   
the random element of Anna Grant's return from the dead?

Anna was one agony I had not intended to share.

_The rumours of my death..._

_Have been greatly exaggerated._

How lightly Tarrant spoke the words, both blithe and blind   
to your torment. But your reply was anything but light as you   
slotted the teleport bracelet into its rack.

_Well... slightly exaggerated, anyway._

And when you walked away, your pain was tangible enough to   
drive me to the cushions at the teleport console, biting back the   
urge to cry out. Though you'd gone, the horror of your single   
thought remained with me, bleak and coldly terrifying.

_Not Anna too._

I knew the source of the horror then. So many others had   
already betrayed you. Everyone for whom you'd ever cared... or   
tried to care. You had come to believe that your "walls" would   
protect you from ever being hurt again. And now... You had not   
counted on the intervention of a ghost, any more than I had. The   
hardest betrayal to bear is the one you would never... ever...   
have expected.

_Please, God... not Anna too._

"Cally?"

I jumped, aware of a hand suddenly touching mine, and a   
voice -- Vila's -- concerned and gentle.

"Cally, what is it? What's wrong?"

I should have expected that of all of them, Vila would be   
the one to notice my distress. But I could not tell him. How   
would I explain?

"I'll be all right, Vila. Thank you."

"Well you don't look all right. You're white as a ghost.   
Here, wait a minute. I've got something can help that..."

"No." I stopped his reach for the bottle. "Thank you. But   
I really am all right. Or I will be, as soon as I've taken care   
of something."

He glanced nervously at the corridor, the way you had gone,   
and then back at me as though he might be uncannily aware that   
some connection did indeed exist.

"He'll be all right," he said.

I blinked at him, not understanding.

"Avon," he added with a rueful little smile. "He'll be all   
right, too. He's always all right. Nothing ever gets to Avon."

_Oh, but you are wrong, Vila. So very wrong._

I wanted to say the words aloud, but could not. The pain   
had returned, a frigid, clutching thing from deep within the   
bonding. Your physical discomfort I had intended to share,   
through the interrogation, and to lessen it if I could. But this...

This thing had been born in the darkest hell any Auron may   
face. It drew its pain from cruel, uncompromised isolation.

Your fear, Avon. Alone and silent.

Why did I ever consent to have any part in your revenge?   
Even so small a part as implanting the transmitter? Perhaps   
because the thought of forming the bond had occurred to me. And   
if I could not stop you from going, I might at least help you to   
face the interrogators.

My people call it _uhrtra_.

The Sharing.

It is done easily -- and undone -- with nothing more than a   
touch. A simple mental link. Quite fragile, really. But it can   
serve a useful purpose, as it did in this case. And you need   
never be aware of it at all. I knew you would be angry if you   
knew. Angry that anyone dared enough to care.

I formed the _uhrtra_ when we implanted the transmitter,   
whilst you were still unconscious. I did not think then what a   
risk I would be taking. If you had died in your quest for this   
insane revenge, I would have died with you. Uselessly.

The Auronae say that revenge is bitter wine. One always   
learns, too late, that it is never worth the price you pay.   
So I shared, through the bonding, your five day ordeal. For   
each of us to suffer only half the pain, I reasoned, was better   
than for one to bear it all. I told the others I was ill -- that   
was true enough -- and I retired to my cabin. They assumed that   
I was only mourning Auron's loss, and that was also true, in   
part.

But I had never realized just what horrors you were ready to   
endure in order to exact your "justice." I had never been the   
"guest" of Federation interrogators on a level with these. You   
had. Yet you were willing to go through it all again, just to   
get your hands on Shrinker.

Was he worth it, Avon?

I think not.

You killed him. You dispassionately orchestrated his death   
\-- and yet it turned out he had never known Anna at all. Had not   
killed her. Had never seen her.

An empty victory.

I began to regret the _uhrtra_ then. But I did not break   
it, even after Shrinker's death, because you placed yourself in   
even greater danger by going after Servalan.

Again, I was foolish. And again, I might have died with   
you.

It was I who warned you when Anna drew the gun. Did you   
realize that, I wonder? I tell myself that it was as much for   
self-preservation as for... well, for any other reason. Yet even   
that is partly a deception. I know it, but I don't pretend to   
understand it.

I do not know my own feelings any more, Avon. I do not   
understand why I care... when it seems that you have never cared.   
My brooding at the teleport console was disturbed again by   
Vila's solicitous voice.

"Are you certain you're all right? Why don't you let me get   
you that drink, Cally. It'll do you good. Promise."

I forced his hand away, gently but firmly. "No, Vila.   
There is something I must do."

Over his objections, I departed in the direction you had   
gone, praying that he would not follow. Fortunately, this time,   
he did not.

I knew where you had gone. Even without the _uhrtra,_ I   
would have known. I'd seen you on the starboard observation deck   
before, and assumed you had gone there for the same reason I   
often did. To lose yourself for a time in the vastness of the   
stars. To think, to remember... or to forget.

Only now you could do none of those things, and the stars   
were no longer a comfort. They were nothing now but a billion   
torments, scattered, hard and shining, as empty and alone as the   
agony we shared.

I regretted the bond more than ever in that moment, not   
because I could not withstand the pain, but because this was a   
personal anguish upon which I had no right to intrude. I felt   
suddenly cheap and deceitful for not having told you; you would   
never have forgiven me in any case. And yet, to stop it, I had   
somehow to touch you...

I came onto the observation deck and stopped just within the   
door. The room was lightless, but I could see you silhouetted   
against the rectangular port, standing there, staring out at   
nothing.

I felt the tears, unshed, burn in my own eyes, and I   
recoiled at the pain no Auron would have willingly shared -- the   
acrid, bitter twist of the betrayer's knife that left you so   
horribly alone. It murdered the soul, that knife; made it draw   
remorselessly in upon itself like a collapsing star. Never to   
trust again. Never to... love... again. New walls, re-erected,   
were meant now to imprison you forever. Alone. To an Auron,   
they would have precursed certain madness. I feared they might   
well do the same for you. But they were your choice, those   
walls. I wanted only to be free of them, to break the _uhrtra,_   
once and for all.

Yet I could not.

I couldn't bring myself to move another step into that room.   
Somehow, to reveal to you that I was there at all seemed a   
betrayal as cruel in its way as Anna's had been.

Something else you would never have forgiven.   
So, cowardice defeating me, I fled the room and sought   
solace once again in the confines of my cabin.

For ten hours, I fought, unsuccessfully, to banish the   
demons that raged at you. I even tried to drown them in the   
misery of my own private sorrow: I studied the drawings of Auron,   
a long and morbid reverie mourning the passing of a world. My   
world.

It did not help.

Ten hours of grief gone by, and your voice calling softly at   
my door brings both surprise and, guiltily, relief. Now at last,   
a chance to dissolve the link. And you still need never know.   
I scarcely hear your words -- or mine -- as you remove the   
drawing from my grasp and gaze at it, detached, controlled once   
more. As though your agony had never been. But it is still   
there, behind the walls. I feel it burning. A cold fire,   
twisting... consuming.

"Regret is part of living," you say, concealing your own   
regret once more behind the omnipresent mask. "But keep it a   
small part."

Now is the time, I know, that I must make the contact.

Break the link. So simple and innocent a thing, a touch. Yet   
this one must be oh so much more.

"As you do?" I ask, and your smile is a thing somehow more   
frightening than reassuring.

"Demonstrably."

Now. It must be now.

I smile as well, summoning a laugh, and place an almost   
playful hand upon your chest. A friendly touch, light and   
fleeting. It is all you are likely to allow.

But it is enough.

The _uhrtra_ gone at last, I move past you to the door and   
turn my feet toward the flight deck. A part of me wishes I could   
tell you... explain to you. But I know you would not understand.

Another part of me wishes I could have done more, somehow,   
to help you. But that, too, is impossible. You have made it so.   
Pain, isolation, emptiness. They are all yours once more.

And I cannot -- will not -- share them again.

I am sorry, Avon. But this is how it must be.

He who drinks the bitter wine must drink alone...


End file.
